I Saw Them In Her Eyes
by Sholio
Summary: Roy confronts his most unforgiving accuser ... himself. Missing scenes for Episode 3.


**I Saw Them In Her Eyes**

by Sholio

Spoilers: If you don't know what is revealed about Roy Mustang's past in Episode 15, this story gives it away.

Disclaimer: Fullmetal Alchemist is copyright (c) Arakawa Hiromu, Square Enix, etc.

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The rain should have been warm, for this was summer, and when he left Central City the temperatures had been sweltering; he remembered how stifling the stiff blue fabric of his uniform had been as he boarded the train at the station in Central. But Central seemed very far away now, and he was walking in a very cold rain, in cold sticky mud that sucked at his boots, with his trenchcoat so heavy with water that it felt like a lead weight on his shoulders.

Or maybe it wasn't just the coat ... because this was Rezembool, the only place in the world he'd sworn he would never go.

But you almost couldn't be an alchemist without believing in fate, because alchemy was so bound up with the idea of _precision_, of _understanding_, of _meant-to-be_--almost religiously so, although you could not have explained it to the Ishbalians in words they would understand. And when you can learn to know a molecule, an element, an electron, so deeply that its secret heart opens to you, then the idea is not so far-fetched that time and chance and circumstance are the same way, and that life itself is an ouroboros, a circle without end, where everything that happens, no matter how unlikely, can be fully explained in terms of things that come before and after.

Or perhaps thinking of this trip as inevitable, as the invisible hand of fate, was a cop-out, he mused as he plodded onwards in the rain. Perhaps it was a way of abdicating responsibility for one's own actions, just like that timeworn soldier's excuse: _I had to do it. I was just following orders. It isn't my fault. I had no choice._

There was always a choice.

His hands were cold in his pockets without the gloves, but he did not want to wear the gloves; they were a damp lump wadded in the bottom of one pocket. This place was enemy territory, for him at least, and he knew all too well what he did with those gloves in enemy territory--a response conditioned by years of war, until he was not sure if he had conscious control over it anymore. In all things, he trusted himself implicitly, except for this one.

He knew two addresses in Rezembool, both committed to memory. One was written on a letter which was also thrust to the bottom of one of the coat's deep pockets. The other address he had seen only once, on a report that lay on his superior officer's desk, years ago in Ishbal. He had read it upside down, and even though at the time he hadn't slept in two days, and had been blind drunk for a lot of that time, he still remembered the address as if it had seared itself into his bleary retinas. When he closed his eyes, sometimes he could still see it as clearly as he had seen it then.

An address in Rezembool was the least of the things he saw when he closed his eyes.

He started off to the first address, the Elric boy's address, immediately upon arriving in Rezembool that evening--the address that was his supposed reason for coming to Rezembool in the first place. The eldritch light he saw through the rain, flickering in the sky as he drew closer, warned him that his supposed reason might no longer exist. He knew that light, for he'd seen it during the war in Ishbal, and back then it had spawned horrible things that lurked with all the other demons in his subconscious to haunt his nightmares and sometimes waking dreams. It was the light of human transformation, the forbidden alchemy. Hohenheim's sons were responsible ... they had to be; there were no other alchemists in the village, at least not that military intelligence knew about.

He wanted to run; he wanted to drag his feet; and in the end he did neither, but continued at a brisk walk and crested a nearby hilltop in time to watch the light die away.

_A step too late, as always,_ said the half-amused, half-bitter voice of his conscience, for his ears only.

He waited, one hand resting lightly on top of the gloves in his pocket, even though he knew they were useless in the rain ... waited to see what would come out of the house. He suspected what the brothers might have been trying to do; his sources reported that Hohenheim's wife had died not too long ago. And his imagination, which was not very inventive at things not having to do with military strategy, could conjure few things that would prompt anyone, especially a child, to attempt the forbidden alchemy ... other than the death of a parent.

He waited, knowing that he should go into the house--until recently there had been two living children in that house, and there might still be two living children, or one, in desperate peril from whatever they had raised. And still he waited ... telling himself that it was prudence, not fear; telling himself that the children were already dead; telling himself that he had seen far worse things in Ishbal than anything that could be inside that house.

It was so still and quiet and dark, with a faint purple afterimage of the glowing house still flickering in front of his eyes when he moved his head. The rain pattering around him was more alive, it seemed, than anything in that house.

_This, too, is the effect of the war in Ishbal,_ he thought, curling his stiff cold fingers around the wet gloves. _Fate; karma; history; it doesn't matter, it's all the same in the end. It spreads out like ripples, tainting all it touches. Without the war, these boys would not be parentless; they would not have felt the desperation driving them to --_

The door of the house opened. Against his will, his stomach clenched. But what came out of the house, while certainly not a little boy, was not a monstrosity either; it appeared to be an armored man, or ... no, there was something _wrong_ with the way it moved, and when it turned its head, the strange light in its eyes, or what would have been its eyes, reminded him of the light he had seen from over the hill.

He tensed to fight or run, and took his hand from the useless gloves to slip it beneath his coat onto the butt of his service pistol--a much more potent weapon given current conditions, though he wasn't sure how effective it would be against an armored thing. His fingers were so cold that the gun's dry handle felt almost warm. But he didn't draw, because instinct told him that there was no malevolence coming from the armored construct, and Roy trusted his instincts when it came to things of war ... most of his instincts, anyway. Given time to size up a situation, he could easily tell the difference between a person with hostile intent and one without, and this thing ... person or not ... had nothing of the aggressor in its nature.

Also, he saw the bloody body of the child cradled tenderly in its giant arms. Whichever of the two sons that was, Roy knew that he could do nothing to help--his talents didn't run to things of a medical nature, except for a little bit of stopgap battlefield first aid, and besides, the armored thing seemed to know where it was going. He watched it slouch off towards the town, though not without a twinge of misgiving. From the hill, he had a good view of the house it went into, and marked that place for later.

His inspection of the Elric house, gun in hand, was completed with brisk efficiency that might have surprised his aides, who were used to their young commander's tendency to avoid work--but dull paperwork or menial labor (as he considered most of his tasks at Central) were a whole different matter from having a genuine puzzle to solve. One glance around the interior gave him a general idea of what had happened, but it took a thorough examination to fully piece together the sequence of events, putting together what he'd seen outside with what he saw inside. One boy injured--badly, judging from the horrible amount of blood--and the other boy ... worse than dead. At least the village was not in danger from their rash actions. They should count themselves lucky for that.

A slight smile tugged at the corner of Roy's mouth. Foolish boys ... foolish, brave boys. Not many children would have even thought of doing what they did, let alone manage to come out of it--well, if not exactly whole, then at least kicking.

It reminded him of something that might have been done by a certain boy he once knew ... an egotistical little brat who never met an adult he didn't think he could surpass or a dare he wouldn't take ... a boy named Roy Mustang.

His smile turned cold and bitter, and then dropped away, as he remembered how far he'd come from that boy who believed anything was possible. Right now the Elric brothers, assuming both of them had survived mentally as well as physically, were probably going through the same process of realization that had taken him 20 years and one war to achieve: that life isn't your oyster, and that no person is too tough or too strong to be shattered.

He gently closed the door of the Elric house as he left, although there was nothing there to protect anymore; the furnishings had been destroyed by the force of the boys' alchemic fires. Actually, the rain and wind might be good for it--sweeping through the ruined rooms, washing away the stains of blood and horror. It was the need for closure that made him do it, he supposed ... a desire to leave nothing undone, to leave himself no reason to look back over his shoulder. It had very little to do with doing right by the boys, and everything to do with doing right by himself.

The rain had slackened somewhat, but it still trickled uncomfortably down the back of his neck as he walked down the street towards the house he'd fixed in his head. Vigilant as always while in what his subconscious insisted on perceiving as enemy territory, Roy noted street numbers as he slogged through the mud ... and his heart turned colder than the rain.

Surely not.

But it was. He stopped in front of the house at last, and stared up at its dark bulk, at the numbers of the address that had quietly entwined itself into his subconscious. Warm lamplight spilled from a window into the darkness, and he thought he heard voices, as if the ghosts of the Rockbells were still within.

His lips twisted a little--a smile or a grimace, he wasn't really sure. Fate or chance or time's cruel alchemy ... whatever it was, it seemed to have its sights set on Lieutenant Colonel Roy Mustang.

But he'd come much too far to walk away. Pride ... and something more, some part of him that leaned towards the light inside the room, something that had spent too long in darkness. If there was any chance at all for what he might call redemption, perhaps it waited inside that room.

The door opened under his gloveless hand, letting its light fall out into the darkness. The people inside were too caught up in their own concerns to even notice the quite movement of the door. _A rural village,_ Roy thought; _they trust people here, as the Rockbells trusted in the rightness of their cause to carry them through the war._

The thought hurt, but not beyond bearing. Heartened, thinking perhaps that he could lay at least one ghost to rest tonight, he leaned against the door, and surveyed the interior of the room as he opened his mouth to speak.

And there she was. The girl in the photograph.

Afterwards, he remembered nothing of what was said in that house, by himself or anyone else. This was very unusual, for Roy's memory was normally much sharper than an average man's, partly by nature and partly by self-guided training. Words had been exchanged with the girl and the old woman; he'd seen the elder brother in the bed, his awful wounds bandaged, and the suit of armor with the younger brother's soul trapped within; he remembered this hazily, in bits and pieces, coming back to him as he came out of a period of soul-shattering blackness and found himself walking rapidly in the rain. For an instant disorientation nearly overwhelmed him; Roy _always_ knew where he was, and to realize that he had lost track so completely brought up a moment of blinding panic like nothing he'd felt since the end of the war. He didn't remember leaving the house; he didn't know how long he'd been walking, or in what direction.

For a moment he stood in the rain, breathing deeply, calming his heart as its wild beating seemed likely to tear it out of his chest. Then he looked around him. He was just a little way outside Rezembool; it seemed likely that he'd only been walking for a few minutes.

Still, it frightened him, as did his continued inability to grasp at the memories of what had happened, just moments ago, in that room. He'd been perfectly in control of himself. He did know that much. Not a thing had he allowed to slip; not for a moment had he even looked directly at the girl, except for that first glance, the glance that had undone him.

Because in her clear blue eyes, the eyes of the girl in the Rockbells' blood-smeared photograph, he had seen ... _them._

Not just her parents--though they were the clearest, the most vivid, the ones whose deaths he would have erased with his own blood if he could have done so ... _equivalent trade,_ his conscience said, laughing at him as usual. No ... in the eyes of the girl he'd made an orphan, he'd seen them _all_ ... not just the doctors whose only crime was compassion, but also the rebel boy with the gun, whose eyes he had looked into as he burned the child alive; he'd seen the women and children and old people of the Ishbalian cities, shattered to ash with the power of the imperfect Philosopher's Stone fragment that he'd wielded; every life he'd ever taken had been there, looking out of her innocent, pitilessly transparent eyes. And he knew now, as he stood trembling in the rain, that whatever he'd been looking to find in Rezembool, it wasn't here. It would never be here.

_It wasn't my fault ... I didn't have a choice ... They made me do it ..._

Excuses, all excuses--excuses that died unspoken under the light of understanding. There was _always_ a choice. _I was just following orders_ had been good enough for a young soldier, driven to climb the ranks for promotion after promotion, certain that if the world didn't already revolve around himself, then it would when he was finished with it. But it wasn't good enough for a lieutenant colonel, standing face to face with a person he'd wronged and wronged badly ... a wrong that no amount of apologizing could fix. What did he expect--that he'd tell her what he'd done and she'd forgive him for it? That she'd say, "I absolve you of your sins?" Or that she'd scream at him, slap him, and in doing so, bring catharsis for both of them?

There were no words that could fix this. No words that could bring closure for either of them. When the words were spoken and the crime was hauled out into the open, her parents were still dead and he had still pulled the trigger that killed them.

There was no equivalent trade for this. Even if he had gone ahead and pulled the trigger on himself, standing in that room with the Rockbells' blood at his feet and the cold muzzle of his own gun pressed against his chin ... it wouldn't have fixed anything, any more than the Elric brothers' attempt to return their mother to life had fixed anything for them.

Roy started walking again, aimless and thoughtful. _It's dangerous to see so much of yourself in another person,_ he thought. _This boy, this Edward Elric--he's probably just another irresponsible ten-year-old, and he'll never answer the challenge you came here to give him ... he'll become a one-armed farmer, and you'll go through your life wasting time wondering what happened to him and his brother._

No answers. No fixes. No magic, only alchemy and fate, or whatever force moved the world.

Roy jammed his hands into his pockets, feeling the clammy wad of his gloves in one, the crinkly dampness of the envelope with Edward Elric's address in the other. _Maybe the Ishbalians were right all along. The world is run by a god, their god. We're all on the wrong side, and that's why our lives turn out the way they do._

But it wasn't really true. If so, or if everything was really part of some giant design on which humans toiled their way like ants on a great mandala ... then what was the point of fighting against it? All his life, he'd pushed and pushed against anything that resisted him. Pushed until it pushed back ... or bent ... or broke. Pushed even when there was no reason to go on pushing.

He'd tasted despair in Ishbal, a blacker despair than he had known could exist in the world. He'd tasted the metal of his gunbarrel more than once ... no one would ever know, except his own mocking conscience, but the time that Marco stopped him, or at least interrupted him long enough to give him time to think, was not the only time such a thing had happened to him in Ishbal.

But always, when he'd hit that point where he could either stop fighting or keep going forward, he'd shouldered the burden again and pushed on. He'd never been one to lay down in the mud and let the feet of time march over him. And neither, he suspected, were the Elric brothers ... even if they'd tried and failed to find equivalent trade for a mother's life.

Roy glanced over his shoulder at the distant lights of Rezembool, glimmering through the rain. He'd come a long way, he realized, and his feet were sloshing in his wet, muddy boots. Rain dripped off his rough-cut hair and trickled down his face; either his skin had warmed it, or he'd become so chilled that he no longer felt the cold, for it seemed as warm to him as blood or tears.

It was going to be a long cold walk back to Rezembool to find an inn. On the other hand ... Roy looked ahead of him again, at the road winding off into the wet darkness. He was fairly sure that there was another little town not more than a mile or so up the road, with a whistlestop train station ... and didn't he remember from the schedule that a midnight train went through on its way to Central City? He probably hadn't missed it yet.

The lure of a warm dry bed was not without its appeal. But on the other hand, he'd slept on worse things than a train seat. _And,_ he thought, _there's Rezembool ..._

He hadn't found what he was looking for here, but he thought he'd taken all the town had to give him: a little understanding, a little insight. Maybe it would yield up the Elric brothers, maybe not ... but in either case, the choice was in their hands now. And as for Winry Rockbell--she had her own life to lead, her own peace to make with her parents' deaths. There was nothing to be served here by transfering some of his burden onto her slender shoulders.

With the light and warmth at his back, the dark and cold ahead, Roy walked on, his back a little straighter against the rain. This path, with Rezembool and Winry Rockbell behind him forever, had a rightness to it that he couldn't deny. Strange how sometimes a door could close when you didn't even feel it closing. And maybe someday, something would yank that door open again, and let the horror of his sin pour out to stain his life the color of blood. Maybe that unknown agent would even be the Elrics. When you gambled for gain, you also risked loss as well. But for now, he thought he felt some of his ghosts a little less restless.

Time or fate or chance, or whatever, was moving him on. And for once, he was willing to just go with it, and see where it would take him.

* * *

_Ye author's note: At the time I originally wrote this story, the series wasn't out in America and the fansubs only went up to about episode 15 or so. As of 2-19-06 I've gone back through and fixed some minor name issues that were either inaccurate fansub versions, or my own interpretations of the Japanese pronunciation that turned out to be wrong. _

_(I still like Ishvar better than Ishbal, though ... LOL.)_

_Another thing that's been changed is that originally I had an explanation of the term ouroboros, because when I used it in this story, it hadn't appeared in the anime yet. I guess everyone knows what an ouroboros is by now, so the explanation is not needed..._


End file.
